The Three Lovers: Setting
A red sun fades far into the distance and a black sun grows ever nearer…
Three Moons shine bright in a starry sky, broken orbs in the darkness, one white, one red, one blue.
Enter the world of The Three Lovers.
Map of The Spine (click to enlarge)
World: Luoja
Continent: Azarak
Country: The Spine
City: Krel-Shamarith
The Red Sun and the Three Moons shine high in the sky, the gods that represent them are the predominant religions of the country and the world.
“Three Moons illuminated a starry sky, the first a white orb, the second a red half, the third a blue sickle.
“Scholars of western religions believed the White Moon a home to shapechangers, pale wolves and dark bears that hunted in forests embedded in its craters.
“They believed the Red Moon a home to dragons, great wyrms which swam in rivers of molten lava.
“They believed the Blue Moon a home to angels with gills, lairing behind crystalline waterfalls that flowed from diamond mountain peaks.
“Scholars of eastern religions did not believe so, they thought in more philosophical terms, morphing the elder religions’ ideas into concepts. To them, the shapechangers’ moon was adaptability, the wyrms’ moon was fiery passion, the angels’ moon was cold logic.”
(Art for the French cover of Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe)
The Red Sun is a jealous god, its virtues are staying loyal to one partner, to rule in power with law, to use warcraft to dominate and to secure a plentiful harvest for all.
The Black Sun is god of the apocalypse and the Dreamlands. Doomsayers believe it draws ever closer to the world, causing natural disasters and drastic weather changes, spreading its hate through nightmare. From it will supposedly be born the demon that ends the world, with a crown of horns.
Luoja has strange gestation timings - it takes only 10 seconds for a child to be born, from insemination to pregnancy to birth. If a child is particularly genetically strong, it may take longer to gestate, or so the fertility religions believe.
Thus being fertile is seen as a great boon, people have dozens of siblings and the population of cities are huge.
The gender politics of the world is somewhat different to our own. Women have less strain on their bodies from childbirth and are more often rulers, craftspeople and even warriors. Prostitution is not a predominantly female occupation but of both genders, oral sex is seen as a more important skill due to the high fertility rate.
(Art by Larry Elmore, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber)
Being infertile is a terrible curse, seen as abnormal - they call these people deadwombs or deadseeds.
However the fact that women are the birthers is still a major factor. Cults of the Three Moons search for a Chosen Child, and do so in Witchfarms where women birth children and many of them.
Death is cheaper than Life and Time is short, for the Black Sun approaches.
The priestesses and priests take the newborns to Witchpools and dip them to see if they will grow… and become the Chosen Child.
Our Three Lovers adventure and scheme in Krel-Shamarith, the main city in The Spine.
Krel-Shamarith is the sprawling city of a thousand taverns and a thousand temples, sitting on the River Spine.
It is known as Festival City, many religions compete for the imagination of the populous by staging grand events such as the Festival of the Gift, the Festival of the Dying, the Festival of Dreams & Nightmares, the Zy-Vel Festival of Shadowplay and many more. All clamour to be part of the festivities.
The city is also famous for its Midnight Markets, luscious bazaars that open late and shut early. Sold there are all manners of eccentricities from the span of the continent, sickly fruits from the Bejewelled Jungle Kingdom of Dythoreak, amber-salt from the dunes of Zaradamus, and artefacts of long dead empires of Ysgrail.
The Kingdom of the Spine and its capital are ruled by The Stygian King and his three witches from the Stygian Citadel, which looms over the whole city, a black castle on the highest hill.
(Art by Jamga for Dune)
The city sits on a river between two deserts.
The Blood-Pink Desert of Ysgrail is ruin filled, hundreds of civilisations were born, grew and died there.
Scroungers search in the wrecked pyramids and valley tombs for relics of those ancient kingdoms - the Redsand Sultans, Princes of the Red Moon and the Sun Kings all rose and conquered the Spine.
(Art by Simon Groinard for Dune)
The White-Gold Desert of Zaradamus is a barren desert, empty of civilisations’ ruins except for one - the Lost City of Zadaz - where supposedly fountains of white bronze and white gold flowed from transforming the desert from yellow to white. Salters dig away at the white-sand dunes searching for amber-salt to sell at the markets of Krel-Shamarith. Believers, religious pilgrims searching for Paradise, also roam its sands.
And that is all the detail you’ll get without reading the books! I hope you enjoyed your taste of my fantasy setting. Soon I’ll have artists drawing my worlds and won’t have to use the work of amazing artists drawing other settings.